The invention pertains to the user interface and software engineering fields. More specifically, it is an apparatus and a method for building user interface for business applications and information systems. To simplify and speed up the process of writing computer code which implements user interfaces for business and other application programs, what is needed is a specific set of primitives that implements a set of patterns which can be used to fully define types of user interfaces for at least business applications. What is needed is a set of primitives and an editor tool by which the user interface can be specified using a model, validated with the user, verified for completeness and non ambiguity, and automatically transformed into source code in a third generation programming language so as to output working computer code implementing such a user interface being able to communicate with a business logic component, responsible of implementing the functionality of the application for which the user interface is the “front end”.
The problems with prior art User Interface (UI) models and code generation tools are the following: UI specification methods do not consider enough the domain model (the functionality of the application). Examples of such deficient UI model and code generation tools are: MOBI-D, TRIDENT, CTT. In other words, these prior art UI modeling tools assume that the business logic will be fully specified apart from the user interface and coded manually. Coding the business logic separately may lead to bugs in integration with the UI and bugs in the business logic code itself. This lengthens the delay from conception to first sales in the market (time to market) because of possibly long delays in debugging the business logic code. Furthermore, these prior art UI specification tools do not have: a precise, unambiguous semantics which can be validated to eliminate bugs in the UI code; translators that can generate UI code automatically from the validated specification of the user interface and able to connect with a generated business logic component; and a persistence layer also generated to conform an entirely automatic generated application.
On the other hand, methods and notations for the specification of functional requirements of computer programs (tools to define models of the business logic of a program) such as OMT or UML do not consider user interface requirements as well. This situation leads to a state in which two models are needed to fully specify the business logic and user interface of a computer program (one for the functionality and the other one for the user interface). This produces synchronization problems whenever one of the specification changes. In other words, when one of the specifications changes, the other specification “breaks” and code written implementing this other specification will no longer work with the code written implementing the first specification. This requires expensive and time consuming reworking of the second specification.
UI generation tools like Genova, TRIDENT, SEGUIA, MOBI-D produce partial code where the UI code generated is not complete. Such code cannot be compiled directly and needs hand coding before a program which can run as a final application exists.
Previous UI modeling tools do not present a set of primitives that can be invoked to specify the elements of a user interface for business applications. Teallach, iUML and CTT present a good set of primitives that can be used for user interfaces for programs that address academic problems and theorization. However, these prior art tools propose very low level primitives that can not be used in medium-sized industrial projects without suffering scalability problems. Academic research about UI modeling tools such as iUML, Wisdom or CTT has resulted in tools which have not been tested in industrial projects and has not been fine-tuned for such scalability requirements.
Some notations like OVID and UML lack precise semantic meaning in the concepts used. As a result, this makes it impossible to generate validated specifications of the User Interface Model (Presentation Model) and bug-free code from an imprecise specification.